Tennessee Baseball projected to be No. 1 overall seed in NCAA Baseball Tournament
Tennessee Baseball doesn’t seem to have much to lose entering Sunday afternoon’s SEC Tournament championship game against LSU. The Vols are already projected as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Baseball Tournament according to both D1Baseball.com and Baseball America.
D1Baseball has the Vols hosting No. 2 UC Irvine, No. 3 Georgia Tech and No. 4 Jackson State in the Knoxville Regional at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. The outlet has Mississippi State as the No. 16 seed, the final host seed, across from Tennessee in the bracket.
Baseball America has the Vols as the No. 1 overall seed in Knoxville also with UC Irvine as the No. 2, ahead of No. 3 Evansville and No. 4 Jackson State. Dallas Baptist is the 16th seed in the Baseball America bracket, with Mississippi State as a No. 2 seed in the Dallas Regional.
The 64-team NCAA Tournament Baseball bracket will be released on Monday at Noon Eastern Time on ESPN2. Regionals begin Friday and run through Monday. Super Regionals are set for June 7-9 or June 8-10 and the College World Series in Omaha begins on June 14 and runs through June 24.
SEC Tournament Championship: Tennessee vs. LSU, 3 p.m. ET, Sunday, ESPN2
Tennessee (49-11), the No. 1-ranked team in the country the last three weeks and the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament, faces No. 11 LSU (40-20) at 3 p.m. Eastern Time Sunday in the championship game at the Hoover Metro Complex in Hoover, Ala. The game is televised by ESPN2.
The Vols lost their first game in Hoover 14-3 against Vanderbilt. Since then they’ve beat Texas A&M, Mississippi State and the semifinal rematch against Vanderbilt Saturday night to advance to Sunday’s championship game.
Tennessee is playing for the SEC Tournament title for the third time in three years. The Vols lost to Arkansas in the final in 2021 and beat Florida for the tournament title in 2022, before becoming the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Tennessee’s NCAA Baseball postseason history under Tony Vitello
Tony Vitello in 2019 took Tennessee back to college baseball’s postseason for the first time since 2005 with a 40-win season in just his second year on the job. The Vols were eliminated by North Carolina in the Chapel Hill Regional final after wins over UNC Wilmington and Liberty.
In 2021, after the COVID pandemic cancelled the 2020 season, Tennessee won 50 games and went back to the College World Series for the first time since 2005, sweeping LSU in the Knoxville Super Regional before losing to No. 8 Virginia then No. 2 Texas in Omaha.
The Vols won 57 games in 2022 and were the No. 1 overall seed in the postseason, but were upset by Notre Dame in the Knoxville Super Regional.
Tennessee’s 44-win team last season advanced out of the Clemson Regional and won in three games in the Southern Miss Super Regional to go back to Omaha. There, the Vols lost to LSU 6-3, bounced back with a 6-4 win over Stanford but were sent home after a 5-0 loss to LSU.
